One afternoon in February 2008, my phone rang. It was a partner from a major New York law firm asking if I would like to be a non-executive director on the listing on the Alternative Investment Market in London of a ‘third party funder’. I feel now that I was speaking then for (effectively) the entire London lawyer community when I asked my first question: ‘What is third party funding?’

Well, now we know! Or do we? The decision by The Law Reviews to publish its inaugural Third Party Litigation Funding Law Review is certainly a sign of a substantial build-up of interest in the subject, but the contents of the Review itself show that it is perfectly possible for experienced practitioners who are well versed in the subject to differ when it comes to outlining their answers to what is essentially the same question that I asked back in February 2008 – once again, what is third party funding?

Even the naming of third party funding (TPF) can cause difficulties, as besides TPF we have litigation funding, arbitration funding, litigation finance, settlement funding, claims purchase, monetisation (of awards and judgments), law firm funding and in-house legal department finance – the list grows as awareness spreads. Perhaps the best way of describing what TPF has become is ‘legal capital’.

The essence of TPF is the deployment of legal capital to fund the realisation of assets that are contingent on the resolution of some form of legal process. If the assets are sufficiently attractive, other things besides (or instead of ) legal costs can be funded, including corporate expenses.

Editor: Leslie Perrin, Calunius Capital LLP

In this book:

Editorial chapters

Editor's Preface

Leslie Perrin, Calunius Capital LLP

Countries

Australia

Austria

Brazil

Canada

England and Wales

France

Germany

Hong Kong

Italy

Nigeria

Poland

Portugal

Singapore

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates - Dubai International Financial Centre

United States

Leslie Perrin, Calunius Capital LLP

Leslie Perrin is the chairman of Calunius Capital LLP, an office he has held since January 2009.

Since its establishment in November 2011, Leslie has also been the chairman of the Association of Litigation Funders of England and Wales, and in that capacity is deeply involved in the development of litigation funding as an international phenomenon. At around the time of this appointment, Leslie was named by The Times as one of ‘those lawyers we believe to be the most influential in society right now’.

Leslie has more than 30 years’ experience of litigation markets, having been successively head of litigation, managing partner and senior partner at international law firm Osborne Clarke. One of his cases still holds the record for a UK jury award of defamation damages against an insured defendant. In other cases, he became recognised as one of the pioneers of group actions in the UK.

For nine years until 2015, Leslie was also the senior independent director of DAS, the UK market leader in legal expenses insurance.